Why Comfort Isn't Always Good for Us | With Architect Stefan Behling

0:01Stefan Behling:Hello there, welcome back to Homing. Today's guest is the architect Stefan Behling. Stefan believes that many of today's buildings have turned us into what he calls humans in captivity. So they keep the temperature constant, they shut out the sounds and smells of the outside world, and I guess they misunderstand what it really means to be comfortable. As a senior partner at Foster & Partners, Stefan spent more than 30 years thinking about these ideas and applying them to his projects, ranging from Apple Park in California to habitats designed for NASA on Mars. In this conversation, we explore what the science of the senses can teach us about creating a home that genuinely supports our well-being.

0:44Stefan Behling:We discuss why constant comfort isn't always good for us, and what space travel can tell us about our need for nature. Stefan also explains why he believes there's actual nutrition in natural light, and why cheap LED lights are the equivalent of junk food for the home. Here it is, and I hope you enjoy listening.

1:10Stefan Behling:Hi Stefan, thanks so much for being here, really appreciate it. I always ask the same question to start with, which is, for you personally, how would you define the word home i think it's a very interesting question i think the first thing i would probably say home is where the people are that i love i think it's people that probably do it first because i move around a lot and i think uh yeah coming home is where they are and then if i go through where we live right now it's yeah that is obviously that is our home it's safe it's cozy it's comfortable it's yeah we can just uh be who you are and let your hair down and just not pretend to be anything and just be be yourself that's probably home yeah where do you live at the moment then in battersea in battersea so if it's the place you can let your hair down and it's about safety and being yourself is it also a place where you care about the kind of outward display of home no it's the opposite it's interesting i work in battersea and we lived in battersea for 37 years now and i would even say battersea is my home it's the community there but within that battersea Within a few streets, I think we moved in four or five different locations.

2:37You know, I'm an architect. I enjoy the process. It was a different place. We only bought a place very late in life. So for 20 years, we were renting. And then we did it. And it's a very earthy house that is just for us. It doesn't represent. I never, ever take clients there. It's just for family and friends. and um i think it almost takes a while until you get to the realization it's just for yourself you could argue it's a very privileged setting you can just do it exactly the way you want it without any need to represent or show off or be something yeah yeah it's just for yourself exactly well for the family why do you think that's something that you sort of learn as you go along because i think sometimes people in life they believe they have to show something you know have a car that shows that you successful or that you made it or whatever it is i think there's there's a lot of things in society that you do even fashion that you're trying to be something yeah then you know dress up to be something that is maybe more than you think you are like padded shoulders my conclusion is the house should just be for let's say your loved ones your family yourself i think the older i get i think it's the role of the home is is far more psychological than it is physiological or or trying to look like a magazine yeah it's like what does your and the family's psyche feel is good for them?

4:20Do they find it enjoyable, relaxing?

4:24Stefan Behling:Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that, actually, which is sort of actually the whole idea behind homing, to be honest. I think you've nailed it with that. So if it's a psychological thing, can you put some color around that? In what way for you does your home support you and the family psychologically? well i'll tell you an example that i think might be a hint our children are now 30 25 20 and they don't live at home anymore but they come and visit us which is fantastic but they also come when we're not there and they just want to be in the house and they haven't even grown up in the house so they have no memories of living in the house but they go because they love the feeling And they say it kind of makes them feel good and comfortable and protected.

5:17And the light is beautiful. Daylight comes in and the evening it's super warm light. And they can actually just go and be in their place. But they just love to hang out. I mean, that's not a bad measure of does it actually work, not just for us, does it actually work for them? Yeah. It's a very banal lens, but as a nice place. Yeah. It makes me feel comfortable and happy. that's why I'm coming here say my children that's so interesting I think yeah I think

5:45Stefan Behling:psychologists would probably call it a secure base right which is the idea that we need that secure base to be able to go out into the world and then come back to the security of it yeah it's really interesting I want to ask you about the senses because I know this is your area let's deviate from the home slightly let's take a modern office building for example that you see in the city of London, you know, lots and lots of these glazed high-rise office buildings. How do you think about those buildings in relation to the senses? And I know before you've talked about starving the senses somehow, but tell us about that.

6:19I think I have to kind of go out a bit. We're all mammals. And I think we're all craving to still be connected to nature. We're craving to be connected to people in our species, our family, loved ones, gorillas, hugging, you know, touching each other. But I think nature is a deep thing we humans need. And there are environments that take you more further and further away from nature. And I think modernism has a big role in this. And take your glass office building. I am probably not as far removed from nature but i mean that's why i got into space and all of that world you know the extreme edges of being far away from nature and from home and home planet but if you are in an office building a lot of them are the humans have just been reduced to like a number on a desk you know and if i'm provocative and whatever but it's like chicken farming It's not that someone has tried to create the nicest, loveliest environment for you.

7:29It is just square meters, density, getting how many people are we going to be able to squeeze in to this building to do work. And I think it's a very unnatural environment.

7:41Stefan Behling:That's so interesting. In the bad ones, yeah. I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds of variations and some buildings are fantastic. I don't want to generalize, but in a provocative way, I think the bad ones are almost degrading to humans. Yeah, I love that. We're battery hens. Yeah. I mean, sometimes when I'm on a roll, it's like we're humans in captivity. And we have quite a good instinct, again, by seeing animals in the wild. We get that. We watch David Attenborough, and it's all beautiful. and then you see humans in captivity in a zoo or even more brutal farming conditions and you go oh my god that's terrible how can you do this to to these poor animals so then you go so what is the right way if they are in captivity to at least give them a human environment yeah discuss yeah and what is that what does it mean you know human environment natural environment they are indoors yeah so i'm not saying well they should all live and roam the fields or keep them all in hyde park but um that i mean that is the question yeah yeah then that over that funny journey i got to the senses analyzing you know what is it yeah what would you describe gives you a human environment yeah well what do you think those main ingredients are then it's a very very big question but i think if you started in the abstract it is how does nature stimulate us when we're outside if you just i'm not avoiding your question but if you go for a walk in hyde park if you go through a walk on a sunny day you probably walk under trees and beautiful avenues go for a walk in saint james's park a dappled light on the floor little breathe comes through it's varied it's interesting it smells good it actually in a way stimulates all your senses yeah it's your visual sense it's your hearing or your bird song yes of course i can give you bird song artificially through some loudspeakers and that's not what i mean but but you were i think we humans instinctively we do understand what feels good sit in a beer garden yeah a nice place in the shade it's a lovely temperature i don't want it too hot i don't want it too cold but if you have give me a breathe i can accept the temperature a bit higher because the breathe cools me down i put my clothes on appropriate to the temperature and so that's what i would like yeah in a building yeah i'm with you and then you go okay that's just uh you know it's a lot of talk how do you really really do it and uh i would say i spend most of my professional life trying to do it yeah and uh we're very super privileged i mean you know life is all about luck you have to work with amazing clients and whether it's steve jobs and apple or mike bloomberg and you know for the bloomberg building but the interesting thing is they all get it and without even telling them they are also on that level so if you accept that the people in let's just call it an office building are the most precious thing you have they're actually the most expensive thing you have as an organization and if you want them to do the best work of their lives what conditions should you give them so they can just be the happiest most comfortable all healthiest people and do the best work of their life.

11:30And then through that, I mean, I don't want to get too technical, but you can just literally go through all the different topics. How do you heat them? How do you cool them? How do you want the air movement? How do you give them the smell of fresh grass when they're in an office building? How do you get the right acoustics? I mean, all of it comes together and ultimately that's the task.

11:51Stefan Behling:definitely you mentioned steve jobs there i mean what what have you learned do you think through all of your work with apple over the years i mean obviously a huge amount but related to this thing about giving people who work there and of course giving people who visit as well that experience of some kind of connection to their senses and the natural world well i can't talk about it too much that's the problem of my job but i think he was an extremely he was a nature loving man. I remember the first brief with the whole project should be all about California. And he spoke about apricot trees. And the very first meeting, it's all about California.

12:35And in this part of California with orchards and apricot trees and the connection to nature and apricot trees being the most beautiful trees in the world. And it wasn't about square meters. how do you make people work harder it was about the feeling and it was then about you know how can we connect people with nature and make them aware of it and walk through nature every day on their way into work the parking structure was moved further away from the building so people walked through the landscape that was a very conscious decision and he was driving it and that you're always aware of it and you know hated fan noise i don't want to hear any fans and the the healthiness of the air that comes in and the fact that you can have it coming in from the outside directly and it's natural and it's clean and you can smell the cut grass i mean a lot of these things they sound superficial but they're actually quite deep and i was always amazed how incredibly deep and thoughtful he was he was the opposite of what some people might expect that you know he's a ceo of a technology company but it must fast far more philosophical and uh psychological naturalist those were the discussions we would have as you're talking the

14:05Stefan Behling:word control came into my head. So as an example, I stayed in a hotel in New York, I don't know, a few months ago. And it's one of those places where you can't open the windows because they want you to use the air con. And I quite wanted to feel the sun on my face and I wanted to be able to hear the street down below. I could hear the people snoring in the bedroom next door, but I couldn't hear what's going on the street. I had nowhere to put my suitcase. I had to kind of dance around it on the way to the loo. You know, we're all very familiar with this. What do you make of that link between control and your living environment?

14:42I think if you start with the word freedom, you're free. Come back to my maybe simplistic way of looking at where humans come from and, you know, we're animals. I'm free. Free comes, immediately comes with choices. And if I'm free to do have it whatever way i want it have i want my window open or i want my window closed or i want it cooler warmer light on you know that is a quality that is just i think it's again it's instinct it is what humans want happiness is overused but it makes them happier it makes them more content it actually calms them down because whatever you want you can adapt it you don't have to sit in this condition you know you're not strapped in i can move and on everything and every aspect of your life if you are free if you have choices and you are in control that will give you a positive feeling so as soon as you take it away from people in a long-winded answer you know people feel yeah i think they feel stressed and trapped and strapped in and uncomfortable yeah yeah do you feel like that are there certain environments

15:59Stefan Behling:in everyday life that you move through where you think this is somehow stressing my nervous system this you know i'm having a bodily response to this environment do you feel that yeah like where all the time okay i mean i think it's all that go to the dentist yeah go to anything medical go to into a hospital you're strapped in your pipes i mean i'm giving you extreme things but i mean i I like extremes because maybe, you know, because it's not my mother tongue. It's like, I think it communicates better. I get it. Yeah, that's strapped in. Even in the aircraft, when you take off and you have to strap yourself in and buckle up, you go, okay, this is how it's going to be, at least for this period.

16:42I think there are hundreds of examples and hotels are beautiful. That's the interesting thing with humans. I wasn't there, but I know exactly. I can feel the feeling that you're describing in the hotel room. I had it hundreds of times in my life. And I think everyone gets it.

17:01Stefan Behling:Some of us are more sensitive to our environment than others, of course. What do you make of this? So I've always had a thing about sitting in the middle of a row in a theatre, cinema, lecture theatre, so on. Same. Do you have that as well? So again, it's about freedom, isn't it? That word freedom that you say. What's the design solution to that? I think those are always dangerous questions because I'll say I'll give you wider aisles so you can get out easier and don't have to ask everyone in the road to get up. So you can go. And funny enough, we've done it. I've done lots of auditoriums because this conversation is, again, such a lovely human thing.

17:40I think 90 % probably find that slightly stressful. So if you have the money, you're doing an auditorium where not every square inch counts, you make it wider. So yeah, that's the solution. If it's all about cramming more people into the theater or into whatever, a stadium, then you don't. It's legroom on an aircraft. at some point I think some of the big questions they do come quite often to relatively simple banal, just do that and can reduce the anxiety it just gives people a bit more freedom, control

18:23Stefan Behling:yeah when I was at university it got to the point where I would go to a lecture if I knew it was in a lecture theatre where the entrance and the exit was at the back because you could, if you needed to disappear without having to parade yourself in front of the whole congregation, whereas so many lecture theatres, they put the entrance next to the lecturer. So of course, if someone needs to exit, everyone's disrupted by it. There's small things, but it's really interesting. Totally, totally. I mean, I couldn't agree more. Yeah. You have used this word alasthesia. Have I said that right? Yes, you have.

18:56What does that mean? Well, alasthesia is an interesting word, and it basically is the theory that there is no one comfort setting that is right for a human. So if you go, okay, okay, I'm doing the best office building in the world, say, so what's the temperature and what's the light that I have to do so Matt can do the best work ever? And the answer is there isn't any. What you want is something that always goes slightly to the left, slightly to the right. It's a little bit warmer. It's a bit cooler. It's warmer. But suddenly there's a little gust of the air that makes you, yeah, and then it's gone again in the same gust.

19:44So, oh, he loves the gust. So let's give him more of that little breathe. And after a while, you realize you get a stiff neck because it's the little breathe turns into a draft. so it all comes and goes and it's the non-constant and of course there are barriers so you don't want it to be extremely cold and extremely good but i would call it oscillating and a good way at least i understood it from my own brain is if you're on a bicycle and if i weld your steering in one position your handlebar you can't cycle and then you go into my earlier description of you go for a walk in the forest walk downst james's park yeah you see the birds the ducks the noise the if you would have the quacking of that duck non-stop it would freak you out yeah if the the light comes through and it's dappled light and you go these are terrible lighting conditions there is it shady is it lit it's the mixture and the mixture is the thing that if it's right i think it makes you feel very calm you know people then call it stimulation and then people are negative say oh you're over stimulating people you're trying to give them extreme stimulation that's so stressful and will stop their concentration but the actual effect is is the opposite.

21:18And it is. That's why I like the bicycle. Of course, if I tell you to do your steering wheel and yank it to the left or yank it to the right, you're going to fall over. It's this very, very subtle movement. And that is, again, it's that's what you have in nature. The light changes throughout the day. There is not one light. It changes. Clouds come, clouds go. The color temperature in the morning is different to lunchtime and in the evening. And that's what we need. And ultimately, you could say, yes, but that's all fake. But then I think we have to accept that having a representation of the natural phenomena's indoors, I think the fake word is wrong.

22:03It is, I'm just giving you the best I can to give you a little bit of nature because you decided to sit at a computer all day because that's your job and you're spending 90 percent of your time indoors i could say well it's your fault go out more which is also a true it's actually a true comment if everyone would go for a long walk at lunchtime for an hour that would 100 percent be good for everyone's health but then you don't so that's why i'm when i'm not trying to find an excuse for it but i've heard the fake argument a few times and i do i personally believe you still have to do it so alesthesia in a long-winded answer is the scientifically correct word for

22:46Stefan Behling:what i'm describing i think that's so interesting i really like that analogy of the bicycle i think that's so easy to visualize if we were to take that bicycle into our home for a moment because you know we kind of get it in a corporate environment like we do have less control we sort of know that to an extent but at home we have a bit more of an ability to shape it maybe yeah can you think of some sort of practical things that we might do to help that little shimmy in the steering i'm always very careful with telling people how to live because i do think it's it's so personal and it's always slightly know-it-all if an architect tells people how they should live their lives anyway but i'll give it a go i think you know living in london for all these years make sure you know as i've been lived in horrible flats and different old rundown houses make sure that all your such windows work really well so at least the piano that you're going to play works and they're not all painted over and well no we can't open that window and that sash doesn't work because i think the sash windows are fantastic for ventilation open at the bottom a bit at the top and the entire family play freedom for all modify your ventilation all the time number one it sounds banal but i always find it you know i've lived in so many flats where well you can't open that window and you can't open that one and you can open this one but you know on a hot day you want get them all open and get cross ventilation happening and it's not as bad as you think it is then i have one pet subject that is lighting and uh i don't want it to go too long but architects are to blame for it builders too people do lighting in their houses based on grids there's a kind of military precision rows of down lights and they're all in grids because that's how architects or builders you measure it and they all have the same distance I think that's nonsense.

24:51Light it where you want the light, but don't light it because someone says there's a grid. Number two is the quality of the light. This is a really long topic, but I want to do it quickly. The quality of the light has changed over the last years because of energy. So a lot of people have installed LED lights. Cheap LED lights are almost as bad as junk food. the light that comes out of cheap led lights really is nothing it has none of the solar spectrum you know you everyone knows about there's a bit of visible light that you have in the solar spectrum and there's uv light and red light and all these different colors but leds reduce it down to a very narrow range quite blue quite cold yeah the cheap one i don't want to whatever simplify too much but that light is a it's not good for you and i can go on for a long time why it's not good for you but i also think it makes your whole house exactly the way it is right now look less good than it actually is and in my own personal life i've installed something which is it's called dim to warm so there are led lights that you can dim and they don't just dim in terms of quantity they also dim in terms of color temperature interesting so in the evening you dim your light but it also gets warmer so you get more of a tunic stream you can do it that it almost feels candlelight lit it's fireplace lit and i can give you a lot of psychological things why in the evening humans quite like the warmness of the light but that's quite an easy fix and as i told you my children love coming to our house they love the atmosphere in the evening and everything is done you do it yourself you turn your knob so it's not like some super special computerized system and the computer tells you what you want and if you want to work hard on a project and you want tough working light turn it on full blast and make it cold and lunchtime lighting.

27:07Stefan Behling:That's really interesting, Stefan, because obviously we'll all have come across dimmer switches, but I confess I haven't come across this idea that you can also change the colour temperature as you dim. So what is that? Technically, what is that? Is that a type of bulb, or what is it? It is LED lights. It is still LED lights. But the atmosphere is, and basically, without getting too technical, in an LED light there are these little bits of material that determine what color comes out of your led lights and it has at least two different ones one is brighter yellow and one is a more uh is a darker mustardy yellow and it basically by mixing them the effect for your eyes is that i know a lot of scientists who say you should bring back at least incandescent light the good old-fashioned light bulb which i was like as i'm a very simple brain within the light bulb there's a little wire fighting for its life burning you know super orange so that it's like a micro campfire but that red light from that little wire or near infrared light and right is actually really really good for you so if you have a little task light and at your desk i mean you know you write a lot i would have a task light and accept the energy penalty and actually have an incandescent light because that will actually be good for your health.

28:36Yeah, totally agree. You know, there's all this research on the benefits of red light and, you know, people are doing really fascinating work in that field.

28:47Stefan Behling:Yeah, red light therapies and things. Yeah, exactly. Sorry to interrupt you, but light, I would actually say there is nutrition in light. Oh, wow, that's a great statement. If you actually think about it, a lot of the stuff that we do, you know, in my junk food analogy, yes, we can eat three burgers or we can eat 15 marshmallows, but there is no nutrition. It's all gone. And the natural stuff, you know, it is really very close to food, has nutrition. That is what our body needs. We do need the radiation. And again, people who are against it, they go, oh, yeah, but you're going to burn everyone and everyone is going to get a sunburn.

29:28Of course not. But there is nutrition in daylight for sure that your body needs. So if you live in an artificial environment, at least give people as much of the good and healthy stuff as you can. And that really is, well, I believe very strongly that that's what we have to do.

29:49Stefan Behling:Yeah, I agree. At a very basic level, it's thinking about it as blue light in the morning, red light later on in the day. If you want to boil it down to the essentials, I think that's a good takeaway, isn't it? Okay, so that sort of ventilation, that's lighting. What about acoustics in the home? I mean, you can basically go through all your senses, yeah? Yeah. Acoustics. I happen to live in a flight path. Bad. I should move, but I don't because I love the community and the kind of the work life. And I can be in the office three minutes by foot. So again, we all know it. instinctively we all know it what's good and bad acoustics everyone knows the feeling that you go to a restaurant you know let's say you want to have a call it a romantic dinner but whatever any type of dinner and uh the food is great it all looks good even the lighting is great but the sound is just terrible yeah you know during the dinner you ask five times sorry i can't quiet here and then you hear that person it's just the space is too hard too many hard surfaces not enough absorption and it just drives you nuts and then you go you exit the restaurant and you go let's just go for a walk you know i just need to calm down from the stress so acoustics stress you out yeah yes of course some acoustics are fantastic yeah you go to a nightclub you want the loud music you go to a concert of course you want it yeah you want the echoey space if you go to westminster abbey and listen to a choir singing so again it's all there is the right acoustics for different spaces you can't generalize but in your home decide yet and if you think i wanted to feel more cozy and calm you need some uh some surfaces that absorb it yeah can be a big sofa or multiple sofas and a wall hanging if you want to go really far have carpets on the floor but interesting you know the stuff that you see in the magazine and it's a it's a hard floor and it's super precise white plasterboard walls and the ceiling is concrete you look at the image and it actually looks cool but you can imagine what the space feels like and then you go feels like what do you mean by feel i can imagine what it sounds like by just looking at the image if you well it's a kind of professional uh disease but i you know you can look at something and pretty much guess what it sounds like and again i can't tell would never dare to tell people how their space should feel because as i say it's my ice cream analogy i can't tell you what ice cream flavor you should have or what you like or shouldn't like it's your choice but i mean yeah i'm gonna influence it i'm allowed to do that though i'm allowed to do that though and i i think i i completely agree with what you're saying and i i think an interesting way to think about acoustics in the home environment would be to look at it through your term alasthesia yeah and think about well how do i get some variety of sound and acoustics into my space because that's what we're talking about it's it's it's provoking the senses in different ways at different times of day as you move through the space you know it's quite nice when a corridor for example is quite constricting and it might be quite dark totally the acoustics completely change and then as you come out into a larger living space it sounds different it feels different absolutely so you want variety you want variety and maybe your spaces it themselves are completely different you want These acoustics, if you work from home, in your home working space.

33:40And this is your dinner space. And this is the kitchen. And A, the spaces can feel different. And then within the day of the life of a space, it can also vary. I mean, I am probably, I would count myself as a modernist architect. That's the architecture we do. and we all have problems with soft surfaces so acoustics is a constant challenge so yeah i know

34:11Stefan Behling:exactly yeah what do you mean yeah i'd like to ask you about your work with you mentioned space what space mars nasa just briefly touch on what work you've done there and i suppose what can we learn from that related to this conversation would you say i think it's it's always interesting to go to, let's say, the boundaries of your trade, of what you know. So if you think, okay, we're dealing with space and what spaces, not space-based, but a space should feel like, what happens in extreme conditions. And we were very fortunate to be asked by the European Space Agency and then NASA and how to build in these extreme spaces.

34:58A lot of it was actually structural. and we came up with different 3D printed structure and how would you build a building, a structure. It started, it's weirdly started with the furthest away place from on Mars and then we went into lunar habitats. And that's been going on for many years. We always design things, I would call it from the outside in and from the inside out. And sometimes that meets and sometimes that contradicts. and the inside out approach was very much that if you take the technical things to one side that of course there are astronauts are scientists super technically focused people and go into the psychology of it you know what are they going to lack what are they going to miss and what should you give people because it's no good they all get serious mental problems even though they're tested to the inf degree on earth whether they're the appropriate candidates to go up so they're probably the most resilient humans that you'll find and uh you know what a missing home you know we talk to astronauts one of the funny stories is you miss your uh family a lot you know astronauts who have actually been on missions and says god what you really miss is the smell of earth and the smell of grass and you know just all the different yeah the different smells that you get on planet earth and i kind of i got that and i thought that was it's a bit like steve jobs describing what people should have and uh then you go so how again would you give people who are on a space travel fake i'm using it in a provocative way because people have used it let's say against me but would you try to give them things that are natural to remind them or to make them feel connected yeah what does homesick mean yeah what doesn't mean don't know i don't know but i mean analyze it there probably are phds on homesickness yeah and but you know what do you miss from home and if you go that far away and they call planet earth their home which i find another really interesting thing on your podcast i'm not sure if you've gone there with other people is does a home mean your home home your house or your flat or is home your community your neighborhood or is it your city or your country or when you're an astronaut down there that planet earth is your home yeah so whatever i don't want to go off piste too far i learned one thing that is super dangerous for humans traveling on very long distance space, is gravity, which doesn't really come into my normal list of senses.

37:56I think that scientists have established that the lack of real Earth gravity, not the reduced gravity that you get on a spacecraft, will have very bad side effects on your nervous system.

38:11Stefan Behling:Okay. And your mitochondria and how your cells regenerate and grow and i mean there's so so many things that you can learn in those extreme scenarios when people do something well let's call it at least for now unnatural yeah if you go on a rocket and fly for many months in one direction that's probably fairly unnatural probably is a bit well but you see but the creatures in that rocket are still just the same as the guys who are walking around the savannah exactly well here's a provocative question then stefan if let's say you went to go and live on mars tomorrow with your family so you wouldn't miss your family but what do you think you would miss most about planet earth or just being at home it's a good question i do think it is probably all the well a the first thing is it's family and community it's i think family is a bit too tight yeah all the other humans that you surround yourself with and when you go to the baker and the baker knows your name or whatever at least there's hello to you yeah so i think the loneliness must be pretty extreme even if you have your family and i think nature yeah going out there and and then i'm maybe i'm too boring but everything I just said.

39:43The smell of it, the look of it, the trees. I'll go for a dog walk every day in Battersea Park and the dappled light last night. It's just unbelievably beautiful. The complexity of our nature and our biosphere is just amazing. And without going into fractal geometries and why biophilia exists and why we do need all of this stuff, Go to the garden, touch it, put your hands in the dirt and dig it out or cut the roses and get your fingers pricked. I think all of that stuff will be very difficult for people to do far away and then even in my funny word, to fake it. Will that be possible? Discuss. Can humans live without the planet?

40:34even though we do the research on the space i'm very doubtful that people can what do you think would break down well at this moment being slightly too technical in my mind i think there is no solution yet of how to getting them up there and staying up there a long time so take me there would be a one-way ticket if i went mommy's like it's just that yeah yeah yeah i I wouldn't survive it. So, yeah, you can send young ones up telling them it's still a one-way ticket. But if the science evolves, we might be able to get you another return ticket and keep you alive. So, I don't know. I really don't know.

41:16Maybe I'm too focused on what's a healthy environment and not just a survival environment. So, what's the experiment? How long can we keep them alive up there? and maybe we will find out in the next few years but at the moment i think our topics on earth are so great that we need to find a way that we humans can a repair stuff that we've caused on the planet in the last 50 60 80 years you know the damage is huge i think we can fix a lot of it and then find a way with AI. I think that's all fantastic. With AI, with robotic helps to aid, repair the bigger environment, but also have a much deeper understanding of what humans need.